Vote for one: School Type

[Fleet]

What type of school did you like most? Not the actual school but the grade levels.

Choices are:

Grammar/elementary
Middle/Jr. High
High School
College
Undecided

(Survey included in post.)

[Theda Bara]

High School for me

[biffbronson]

I went with Grammar/elementary by default:

In Middle/Jr. High, a couple of bullies made life miserable for me.

In High School, I was 3rd in my class of 300, but had no social life aside from attending some games.

College was a real struggle to earn my degree, having to take as many as 19.5 credit hours per semester including Calculus, Physics, and Engineering -- and getting into the summer session to relieve some of the pressures.

[Torgo]

High School.
Wasn't the greatest student, but getting to pick the courses helped, most memorable teachers too.
Plus a lot of the classes I had with friends who I'd known since grade school.
A lot of fun memories, during school and working weekend jobs with the same friends, and playing D&D into the late hours, renting/going to the movies, going camping road trips, the freedom we had after getting our driver's licenses.

[AMackII]

High School & College: it helps lead anyone to succeed today with double the boost

[Yong Fang]

I think for me it depends on what schools you went to, and what the experiences were going to these schools. I will try to be brief.

In the 1970's in Memphis when I was a child, there was the desegration of the schools and court ordered bussing. So I went to a private elementary school. I am in my fifties and still have resentments about that place. The woman who was the owner was a religious (Catholic) sociopath. Any rule breaking whatsoever came with a harsh beating from her. A lot of students got beat by this bitch at least once a year. She was nuts. I actually started out there in Kindergarten and was left behind at the kindergraten while the rest of my class went to First Grade. I tool some First Grade classes with them but was relegated back to the kindergarten. To this day, I think this started my feelings of inferiority. I went with my class as normal in the Second Grade and stayed there until the Sixth Grade. A have a few horror stories about the "headmaster" but that might be for another time. Thankfully she is dead now.

The funny thing is that the kids in my elementary school did not live in my neighborhood. Two of them lived out of state (but to be fair the Mississippi stateline was two miles away). I would be with these kids Monday to Friday. I never saw them in the Summer. The kids in my neighborhood all went to different schools. I still have a best friend from early childhood in the old neighborhood who literally lived five houses from me, we never went to the same school. There were several families of Catholic kids, they went to the Catholic schools. The Baptist Church had a private school. Then others went to the public school. It was really strange. After 6th grade, I never saw the private school kids ever again.

My parents moved to an upper class suburban community and I went the local high school from 1981-1985. I have mostly good memories of this school because it was very well ran, and felt that the people who ran the school did care about us kids. This school had 2000 students and my graduating class had about 500 students. So there was really no way for me to get to know all of the students or even the majority of them. The school was about 95% white and suburban. Then the students sort of broke up into different sects or cliques, there were the jocks, freaks (metalheads), rednecks (this was Tennessee), the black kids (some who were jocks), and the others. For myself, I never really felt an in with any group, although I did have friends there. I was also in about three fights there also. I was never involved with anything at the school. I was not a stellar student, I wasnt into sports, I wasnt musical, I was not into clubs or organizations. I have always loved history and there was a history club that met once a month during school hours, but I never joined. It just seemed like another class.

My high school had a great fine arts department and there was actually a television station. I sort of regret not being maybe a part of that, I would have been interested in learning how to work the cameras and studio stuff (and they had that). But for me, I disliked the head of that department, to me his was a jerkface who had his pet students. I will say that my high school had two students you may know, Chris Parnell who graduated in my class (I barely knew him, he lived in my neighborhood, nice guy, his father was in the local television scene in the city in some capacity) and the actress Missi Pyle who started there several years after I graduated.

I went to a state college, but looking back was a waste of my time and my father's money. I didnt like it there, hated almost all the classes, the classes were boring or difficult to me. There was a strong heirarchy perpetuated by a strong Greek (fraternity/soroity) system. It was like high school on steriods, lots of alcohol, drugs were easy to get, getting laid if you can. I could have skipped college altoghter but would have been happier maybe going to the local college in my city but my controlling father didnt want me to go there, he also more or less forced me to take ROTC which I hated and dropped out of early. Many people say that college was the best time in their life, I thought it sucked. If my father was dead then and it was just myself and my mother, I could have gone to the local college part time, got a job part time, enjoyed my life as an 18-20 year old and explored what I wanted to do. College was a waste of time and was stressful. I feel bad for kids who were good students in school and had a good plan of what they wanted to do but never went to college because of cost. My father would have paid for law school if I wanted to go. College was just a microcosm of life, ass kissing, learning mostly worthless garbage, dealing with professors who could make your life easy or very difficult (I had professors that were wonderful and others complete psychotics).